My Productive PhD Student Workflow | ft. ATLAS.ti, Notion, Zotero, Transkribus, and more! 

As a librarian that also works part time in an academic library, I appreciate the shout out to research librarians. Reference and research librarians (and all librarians) are happy to help. Please approach us and don't worry that you're bothering us. We love helping students and I always love when I can find a source or sources that really helps a student do their research.

Hello!! As an archivist in an academic special collections library, I LOVE THIS! The shout outs to your research librarians, the "good to know" bit for archives visits, and mostly your section on why you are refusing to use quantitative data and focusing on the qualitative information is SO IMPORTANT and I love it! We are using Transkribus in my institution and I love to see how you've incorporated its use in your study!

I absolutely loved how you went into your philosophy of why you rejected qualitative analyses of your research. It was really well thought out and considerate.

I deeply admire your work. Thank you for making all these tools and methods available for everyone trying to build a career in academia.

I'm going to have to watch this three times over. So many awesome productivity ideas in here - thank you for making this video.

As a PhD student in the Arts not doing archival research, that part of the video was super fascinating!

You first turned me on to Zotero when I started my PhD a couple of years ago. I’m still establishing my workflow as I pin down my research question, but you have been so helpful. Thank you Kaelyn!

I've been expecting a video like this for a while now. Thank you so much for sharing. It's incredibly useful, especially for some of us that are relatively new in research!

Thank you so much for your videos. I'm so grateful to find you. it's helpful to give me some amazing suggestions and pracital tools for phd life!

Thanks for the shout out, Kaelyn ❤ Atlas seems to be exactly what I need right now, as a musicologist/archival researcher with no coding experience... I'm downloading it as we speak. Great find! 💪🏻

Amazing 🤩 loved this video! Thank you for putting so much time and passion into sharing your journey and knowledge ❤

Welcome back going wonderful day by day🎉

This video is extremely helpful. Thank you so much for sharing!

This is such a phenomenal video. I’m so excited to use some of these during my own program. Thank you for sharing these insights of yours.

Kaelyn, your videos are absolutely helpful. Thank you for sharing your journey and learning in such a clear and thoughtful way. I'm happy to see your subscriber count grow steadily, and I hope that when I'm here again, probably next week, the 100k mark will have passed! Cheering for you!

One of the best videos of PhD journey here in YT! Thank u so much for this!! 💕

Thanks for sharing! 🙏

You have inspired me to modify my notion page. More aesthetic productivity tools = more productive? i think maybe!

thank you for sharing this video and sharing your workflow. it means a lot to me! please share kind of this in future. thank you

Very informative thank you so much ❤

I am starting my degree next year. this video is VERY informative. enough to make me clicking pause a lot because i need to take notes, pull out all apps and prepare my gears

Your work and ethics are so admirable, thank you for this video, you are absolutely amazing and an inspiration! I found myself in deep thought when you explained your reasons about rejecting quantitative analyses it gave me a lot to think about as well. As for my workflow, I found myself relying a lot on Julius AI as an all-in-one study and research tool. It helps me summarize and extract useful data from long articles, create data visuals, and perform analyses. You have me thinking a lot about my process though. Thank you for sharing your thoughts! ❤

i'll love to have this on a Podcast, love you content.

I think I have figured out how to use Notion for myself after years of watching your videos. It just clicked in this last semester of my Master's. Great video!

Best video ever!

absolutely love this video !! I really hope there could be an in-depth video on how to use zotero and how you integrate zotero with notion

I *needed* this video. I'm writing my master thesis right now and am so overwhelmed with the amount of literature. I used to do everything in Microsoft OneNote because I like handwritten annotation, but it seems I overloaded it with PDFs... I need to figure out my notetaking workflow. Also, I love Notion for my everyday life, but have not yet tried it out for academic life. It seems great to have this kind of overview, which I am lacking at the moment.

Love this Kaelyn! You could also do the Excel portion in Notion. ❤

Pretty awesome, informative and insightful video👍👍. Low key missed Moo.

Helpful and well-delivered content as always! Thank you. I am fascinated by others' workflows. I am curious about your advice to use hand sanitizer. Studies have shown that hand sanitizer may leave harmful residue on documents. Here in the U.S., archivists have instructed me not to use hand sanitizer but to wash my hands with soap and water. However, other archives have hand sanitizer available. Have you come across this issue at all during your time in archives?

Im going to start a Ma in early modern history at KCL and its so usefull to see your workflow and what programs and databases you use. Is there any way you could do a video on the bodlian library and getting a readers card as a non student. I have readers cards for london archives but the bodlian is a little scary. 😅

Get 20% off on all ATLAS.ti products with coupon code ACADEMIC20 at: atlasti.com/

Thank you Karyn Effrontery Pineapple

Hey Kaelyn, I really really liked this video! The section on ethics and methodology really intrigued me. Can you recommend me any good specific articles/books by Hartman or Fuentes (or others) to read more on this topic? Looking forward to your next video!

Very nice wow

I've been using Notero for a little while now, and really like the integration. I'm wondering though instead of having Zotero upload all the articles into one database, do you know if you can create different databases in Notion and then specify which one Zotero should upload to?

Two comments on quantitative analysis and automation. (1) I understand you don't want to incorporate the same lingo and measurements as the perpetrators to do harm (that is a very sensitive thing to do PERIOD) but discarding quantitative research based on that reason does not work because that kind of reasoning could be applied to qualitative research (I assume you are still using documents made by the perpetrators that still dehumanize human beings). Also, at a certain point you have to use statistics to delve into the scope and limitations of your database, especially how many unique individuals you're covering and which groups are represented, how much records are there per attribute. Finally, you can still quantify to emphasize the humanity of the individuals (talking about individuals (women, men and children) and how much we know about their story and which sources you use for these individuals). Quantitative analysis is not bad per se. Quantitative analysis without accountability and reflection is. (2) It is true that automation can disconnect you from the data and create a certain distance with the people's live tied to the data records, but that problem is solvable if you take time to do deep reading of the sources that provide the data and think about the ways the sources inform your data and qualitative analysis (what do the sources not say, etc.). I have curated an own dataset of 1000 people and will use automation and programming whenever possible, 100%, because, trust me, data collection is gruesome and dehumanizing work for one person to bear, and I have not even discussed data cleaning, a topic that is always absent in digital humanities presentations. Professors at universities always pretend that databases are a given and easy to do, but that's either because their tenured position allows them to do data collection over a long period of times (think of: decades) or because they can use students to do the manual entries and corrections and do not do the 'dirty work' themselves. But for one person with no resources data collection becomes a big time sponge, which is why automation like OCR or regrex can do at least 70% of the needed work and allows you to use your time to do deep work, write your thesis and incorporate sources that do need more labor like handwritten documents. Automation and reflection are not mutually exclusive.

First off, absolutely loved this video. I may have to watch it again to see if there’s any tips or tricks I could implement as I get ready to be to join you in candidacy. My question is how are you writing your or documenting your word count. Are you just doing a table in Notion and then put the date, the amount written are you doing like a formula?

Can you post the link to your dissertation notion template? It seems so handy!

Being a part of higher education cohort, I really wanted to attend your symposium day 1 and was waiting since morning 11 am ET, but then realised it would start at 8 pm as per my native time. Signed in, sharp at 8 pm, symposium was going great and when you asked what are you most excited about, I commented my interest, but then after an hour I had to go somewhere and wanted to get back to listen to the topic "tech in Academia by cait" but unfortunately couldn't make it back on time. I reached back at 11 pm joined the meeting again, kept on waiting for 15 minutes assuming it would end at 11:15, but the day 1 was already over. I am guessing it would be about apps that might increase productivity or are related to Ph.D. I wish I at least get to know what was that about.

I use notion, but I am experiencing a lot of problems with the search tool. I type a word and it simply does not find it in my workspace, even though they are there somewhere. Have you ever had this problem?

Can you compare atlas to NVIVO?

What role do ethics/background/who the developer is when you choose software, if at all? For me, it was a huge plus that Zotero is Free and Open Source, and one of the main reasons I chose it over Citavi or something else. Not just for some moral or anti-capitalist consideration, but also for reasons of long term What role do ethics/background/who the developer is when you choose software, if at all? For me, it was a huge plus that Zotero is Free and Open Source and one of the main reasons I chose it over Citavi or something else. Not just for any ethical reasons, but also because it makes sure that the software remains long-term accessible.

You can use AI tools for academic researcher it's helpful. Love from Algeria 🇩🇿❤

Is notion free or do you pay a monthly subscription?

do you use google scholar?

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

you cute af

You have a boyfriend

thank you for sharing all your workflow without covering your texts. Most content creators blur their texts for privacy reasons and I can't understand the context of their workflow. Thank you for your sincerity

damn you would need couple of moths just to learn those tools gtfoh, its either simplicity or it does not work

thank you kaelyn!!! this is so helpful...i love hearing about other phd coding practices. definitely taking notes for my own system! 🤍